...Ishmael Beah's memoirs regarding their experience with the Sierra Leone Civil War, it's evident that the authors endured similar suffering and hardships. The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClellan and A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah have many similarities in regards to the two themes; loss of innocence and survival despite great suffering. Mariatu and Ishmael thoroughly demonstrated resilience all while experiencing the struggles of being a child during war. To start, both characters recalled memories of family members saying important things to them in order to give themselves hope for survival. On page 45 of The Bite of the Mango, Mariatu recalls her grandmother saying, “...every person has a spirit watching over him or her. Some people, if they’re really good, have two or three spirits. These spirits are often relatives who have died, like a grandfather, like Santigie, and sometimes they come to you in the guise of an animal, a bird or a reptile.” This helped Mariatu continue on her journey to safety, feeling like she had a guardian angel. As for Ishmael, page...
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...are the words people never want to hear. In the memoir, “A Long Way Gone,” Ishmael Beah is a young african child, who is turned into a child soldier. He goes thru horrifying changes throughout the novel as he explains his graphic experiences. He explained the memoir in such a graphic and serious tone because he doesn’t wish this nightmare upon anyone else. Ishmael uses all sorts of gruesome language, violence, and gore to alert the reader about always being aware of their surroundings and notifying other people. In the beginning of the book, Ishmael reaches his Grandmother’s village. The village is destroyed by rebels. This is the first place he sees the savageness of the rebels. He watched men fall to the ground bleeding, women dying, children dying, ears bleeding and more, “A woman put her arms around the man and begged him to stand up. He got to his feet and walked toward the van. When he opened the door opposite the driver’s, a...
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...Kristine Chin Ms. Williams English 10 September 19, 2015 A Long Way Gone: Socratic Seminar Topic 4 Notes What does the destruction of Ishmael’s cassette when he joins the army symbolize? • Cassette symbolizes innocence/ his childhood o “The four of us had started a rap and dance group when I was eight” (Beah 6) Raps during childhood o Reminder of his childhood “We loaded out backpacks with notebooks of lyrics we were working on and stuffed our pockets with cassettes of rap albums” (7) • Carries cassette with him while running away from the war o Cassette saves him when he’s mistaken for a rebel/ spy, more than once “One of them found a rap cassette in my pocket . . . He stroked his beard, thinking. ‘Tell me,’ he said, turning to me,...
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...Weapon Conflict Throughout history, humans have used literature as a way to express emotions, feelings, and tell intriguing stories. A Long Way Gone, a memoir written by Ishmael Beah and “Weapon Conflict”, a song performed by Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars are two differing pieces of literature that render powerful messages about the menaces of war that these authors have faced. In the 1990’s, war broke out between harsh rebels and the corrupt government of Sierra Leone. Beah and the members of Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars have different, yet effective ways of telling their stories about the horrors of Sierra Leone. Nevertheless, A Long Way Gone, expresses the true dangers of war more effectively than “Weapon Conflict” because it goes into...
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...progress to each level unless they have successfully met the one before. In the book “A Long Way Gone” the main character Ishmael Beah experiences all five levels of the hierarchy of needs. Before the war, Ishmael is at the fourth level of needs, needs for esteem. However once the war reaches him he was brought down to the first level of physiological needs. Throughout the book Ishmael slowly works his way back up the hierarchy. The first level of Maslow’s hierarchy is physiological...
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...“A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah is a book about the loss of Innocence at the hands of war. Unfortunately this happens to many children across the world every day and it has throughout history. When the book begins Ishmael is a normal boy. He hangs out with his friends playing soccer and listening to music. He has not seen much violence yet and the the only form of war he is seen is in movies and in literature. He has not witnessed a murder or seen the terrible things he will later in his life. I included this part of the book to my analysis to give an example of where Ishmael is in his life before he is thrown into war unwillingly. He is childish and lives like any of us would. However this does not last. A group of rebels go from village...
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...Guns give people immense power, the sort of power you wouldn’t want anyone to be able to possess; the power to hurt, destroy, and manipulate those around them. The book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, follows the story of young Ishmael Beah during the war in Sierra Leone. It tells step by step the events that led up to Beah being captured and forced to fight in a war at the mere age of thirteen. Those with the most power in this war were the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), they attack villages looking for people to force to fight alongside them but if you were to refuse or if they thought you were not good enough, they would kill you. “The rebels fired their guns toward the sky, as they shouted and merrily danced their way into...
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...deadly vice. Although Ishmael Beah’s survival in the war was dependent on withdrawing from reality and losing himself, both his and Mariatu Kamara’s memoirs prove that willful ignorance is a temporary solution to a problem that can only be defeated with awareness. The numerous instances where Ishmael experiences and witnesses denial of the war emphasize that ignoring violence does not make it vanish. After seeing the village his parents stayed in burn and numerous people being slaughtered, Beah stays at a village that was as untouched and ignorant of the war as his own community was at the beginning of the book. This time, he is the refugee, shocked that there is still place in the country where people feel safe. It becomes evident the only way they remain calm and secure is by pretending the war does not exist. “The village was always full of lively chattering and laughter. The adults, civilians and soldier, spoke about the weather, planting seasons, hunting, and nothing about the war” (Beah 101). This description of the normal-seeming town is eerie and a stark contrast to the sight of bodies and the sounds of war that Ishmael has just experienced. “All that darkened the mood of the village was the sight of orphaned children...Apart from this, there were no indications that our childhood was threatened, much less that we would be robbed of it” (Beah 101). The reason the orphaned boys dimmed the mood of the village was that they were contradictions to the community’s fantasy world...
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...There are child soldiers throughout the world that no one knows about, who are forced to fight in wars with no cause like Ishmael Beah. The memoir A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah is appropriate for the Sterling High School English IV curriculum because the content of the text has connections to the real world and the text is complex enough that the reader has to infer information about the circumstances Beah is in and the ability of humans to come out of the devastating effect of war. Throughout the memoir, the reader has to connect Beah’s scenarios with the outside world for a better understanding of the content in the memoir. In general, while Beah is in New York with other child soldiers he states, “Some of the children had risked their life to attend the conference” (196). Here, Beah connects his circumstance with others to portray that there are child soldiers all over the world fighting battles and risking their lives for a cause they do not believe in. The reader gets a better understanding of the outside world from the content of the book because they have to make connections with what is happening outside of their comfort zone. This is appropriate for English IV curriculum because the reader begins to understand the world from Beah’s explanations of what he has been through to understand the reality and toll of war. Furthermore, during the beginning...
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...Ishmael Beah on C-span Ishmael Beah, who wrote A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, published in 2007 and interviewed in C-span by, Brian Lamb (2007) explains that he was a boy soldier living a brutal life and had little to no hope for himself because of the Sierra Leone Civil War. Ishmael was not the only that was impacted but also by millions of the world wanting to stop child brutality and it explains to the first world countries how life is not pleasant everywhere. Although, Ishmael Beah talks to the interviewer, Brian Lamb and intonating in a miserable and gloomy but journalistic tone. The war has impacted him today and has unlocked his creativity in how own comfortable way, talking to someone about his miserable life in such an smooth and incredibly controlling way. It has made me believe that he’s overcome his harsh life challenges. Ishmael was so...
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...A Long Way Gone is a story about persevere descriptive imagery that made it easier for me comprehend and seen clear image. A Long Way Gone is story about a boy name Ishmael Beah. Ishmael Beah is just a young boy who had to go through many difficult things in his life. Ishmael Beah had to run away from his home because of the civil war he ran away for survival .The army captured him and forced him into army. He mentally changed when he got a life changing opportunity. The first reason I like about A Long Way Gone is ishmael beah is very brave. The first reason why he was brave because he going back to Mattru Jong for food and to get the money they had left. “We had no choice but to sneak back into mattru jong, along with some people we...
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...Is (non)violence against oppression immoral? It’s a question to think about, it depends on how someone feels about the situation, it may be in your beliefs. But in my opinion, violence isn’t the smartest way to handle something, a family member can perish or any type of loved ones. Which I wouldn’t desire to experience. Furthermore, in “A Long Way Gone” that’s based on a true story by the author himself Ishmael Beah, was slaved as a young African child by an army to be a soldier. Fleeing the daily life Beah has been going through, refined his life. Due to the fact of Ishmael was a child soldier, a whole community was determined to protest. Which led to Violence, lives were lost and buildings were demolished. In some situations, it’s best to...
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...Hundreds of thousand of children have been forced to become child soldiers. A Long Way Gone and Lord of the Flies both share an essence of innocence that they are forced to let go of. A Long Way Gone portrait Ishmael Beah’s young life in Africa as a child soldier. Ishmael, while away from his village he learns it had been attacked by rebels and cannot return home. When the rebels arrive at the village Ismael has been staying in, he and manages to evade the rebels but must be nomadic. However, when he seems to find peace in a military occupied village, the rebels arrive and Ismael joins the fight to protect himself, becoming a child soldier. After a couple more battles UNICEF comes to take the boys to Freetown in order to be rehabilitated and educated. Esther serves as a role model for...
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...it hopes and its aspirations, before you lies the future, a future full of golden promises” (Jefferson Davis) “A Long Way Gone” was written by Ishmael Beah and published in 2007. This is a novel about a young boy who was affected by war. Ishmael Beah experienced a lot of horrible things because of the war like losing his family. He later is recruited by the rebel army. The rebel army gives drugs to the recruited child soldiers and make them addicted so they kill without feeling anything. He then gets rehabilitated with the help of the UNICEF. The three most important scenes in this story include going into mattru jong to perform dances, trying to survive day to day troubles,and his life in New York City....
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...How depictions of War have changed from 1970 to Present Day War is a captivating subject to a very large amount of people, and as such, war and film have gone hand in hand for quite a long time. Many consider the golden age of the “War film” to be the 1970’s to present day, as that was the time in which special effects and other various filming techniques came to fruition. Now, the wars depicted in these films have varied in many ways over the past thirty to forty years, but in what ways? Obviously the conflicts shown vary, but the amount of violence and gore has also varied over time. Research has shown that over the years, war films have been much more violent and graphic as time has gone on. In the article titled "A Content Analysis of Violence in American War Movies" (1991) points are made that since the 1970’s, violence in film has become significantly more frequent. The question arises concerning whether or not this is due to the fact that audiences have been conditioned to the excessive volume of violence over the years. Alternatively, some believe that movies with a lot of violence are the films that producers and directors believe will be successful. The research in the article was broken into the later period, the 1990s to present day, as well as the early period, regarding the 1970s to the 1980s. When researching the amount of violence it was discovered that “during the later period, there was a mean of 22.2 minutes of battle time compared to 11.7 minutes in earlier...
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